What is the song you sing for the dead?
by Laqueus
Summary: Sometimes the worst person you can be left alone with is yourself. [KomaHina, set the day after the fifth Class Trial, mainly rated M for injury and some horror elements.]


_AN: __Once again, using the English names because they're what I'm familiar with._

oOoOoOoOoOo

It was another uniformly-beautiful day on Jabberwock Island – just like yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before _that_, and all the ones before _those_, stretching away in a long line - and Hajime was sitting outside, enjoying the sunshine. Or trying to, at any rate. It was difficult to do so when beautiful sunshine was the default weather; overexposure meant that something that'd initially been pleasant was quickly transformed into a sweltering annoyance that made the world appear three f/stops too bright. Still, the shade wasn't too bad, and Hajime was a in a small, secluded corner of the Central Island; some half-abandoned nook that was gradually being overgrown by various tropical plants which were all waging war upon one another in a bid for survival. Not being botanically minded, Hajime didn't notice that final point. He sat cross-legged, his shoulders hunching forward as he idly tore at the grass. There was something strangely satisfying about the action, even if he was steadily making a bald patch that exposed the earth beneath, and which, given due time, the nearby _Solandra maxima_ would take advantage of. Still, even with his limited botanical expertise, Hajime had to note that the area was unusual, even for the already-bizarre archipelago. Whilst most of the vegetation on the islands delighted in being as bright and vibrant as possible, here the colours appeared washed-out, like they were part of a watercolour painting; the grass in particular was a pale, spring green that bordered on being mint. A botanist would have given this fact the care it was due, but Hajime wasn't, and so he didn't, other than considering it to be more of Jabberwock's unique brand of "weird shit".

Truthfully, Hajime couldn't entirely remember why he'd chosen to spend that particular portion of free time alone, doing nothing much in particular; there were plenty of people on the island who he could've been spending time with, and plenty more things that could have been done before everything inevitably went to shit again. But to Hajime, at that moment those ideas felt flat, flavourless, and far-away. Like it wasn't the right _time_ for such actives. Anyway, it was nice enough to simply be on his own for once.

'_Still, spending too much time alone isn't exactly the best idea,_' he thought, the Killing Game sitting at the back of his mind like an immovable wall.

On instinct, Hajime glanced about for some clue through which he could discern the time, and came up with nothing. It was unsurprising considering that he was sitting in an area that a hermit wouldn't object to living in. Though he didn't have a watch on him that could tell him just how much time had passed down to the second, it was long enough for Hajime to have thoroughly flatted the grass where he'd been sitting. Perhaps, he considered, the cynical voice of reason echoing within him, it would be wise for him to make a move soon, and return to an area where people were bound to see him? It wasn't so much for the social aspect, no, it was more for the action of _being seen_, a helpful little reminder that _Yes, Hajime Hinata is still alive, thank you very much!_ An unexplained, prolonged absence was sure to get certain people worrying, and cause certain, barbed accusations to start flying around.

Or worse, _make him prey_.

It was a short, sharp, shiver of a thought, one that sliced neatly through the brain with its seriousness. But strangely Hajime found himself not making any attempt to move; instead he sat back, resting his weight on his arms, and stared at the sky.

It was curiously pale, showing neither clouds nor sun. Hell, Hajime figured, it was outright _white_, appearing to glow softly through some unknown power. Providing a backdrop to it all was the faint susurrus of wind that caused the tree branches to gently wave. Something was wrong though; instead of moving with a smooth motion, the trees shifted between positions with no transition, the bough arrangements overlapping at times, looking like a piece of animation with several frames missing. And though the wind was definitely blowing - the trees being evidence of that fact - it was more like it was a sound effect being played somewhere, for Hajime couldn't feel its chilly touch against his skin. Strange.

He shifted his weight forward, elbows coming to rest on his knees, as he began to consider this. But before he could properly scrutinise all the strange little oddities, a pair of arms slipped around his chest, snaking in from behind.

"Hajime," came a sing-song voice. A head nuzzled against Hajime's shoulder, rumpling and creasing his shirt as it did.

'_How the fuck did he find me?_' was Hajime's first surprised thought. But it quickly drooped under experience; his companion could probably pick him out of a room full of Hajime clones. Or perhaps drop dead from sheer pleasure, which seemed like the more likely option. He fought off the urge to sigh, a faint blush dusted across his face, and instead said: "What do you want, Nagito?"

Nagito propped his head upright, his chin softly digging into Hajime's shoulder. "Ouch, you're being remarkably cold today. Though it's no more than I deserve…"

"Excuse me?" Hajime's eyes slid to look at him, and ended up with a half-blurred view of white hair. "You're the one who left the cottage in a huff this morning."

Whoops. As soon as the words 'the cottage' left his mouth, Hajime knew he'd made a fatal error. He blanched, his mouth closing with a sharp snap. _My_ cottage, he should have said _my_ cottage, not _the_ cottage, which could both shelter and imply a certain amount of co-habitation. And that was most certainly _not_ what he and Nagito were doing, even if they had slept in the same bed every night that week so far. Though it had to be said that that in itself was odd; normally their bed-sharing was spottier and more sporadic, thanks to the nature of their personalities. Still, hopefully Nagito wouldn't catch it, and it'd just get swept along with the rest of the sentence, remaining an ignorable little detail.

"Oh?" Hajime's heart sank at that innocuous little exclamation; even without looking at Nagito, he knew him well enough to mentally see the expression that accompanied it: one of his eyebrows would be lifted in a quizzical tilt, and there'd be that damn inscrutable _smile_ on his face, the one that made him look both the picture of innocence and like he held some fantastic secret behind his jaws. Nagito continued, unaware of the minor conundrum presently taking place within Hajime's mind. "Did I? Well, since we're now living in such close proximity, I'm not surprised that you'd noticed. Just like how I've come to know that you have a terrible mood before bed!" He tutted. "You're so impatient, really; it's a wonder that you're able to give your barely-average performance in Class Trials instead of just _impatiently_ rushing ahead…"

Throughout the entire delivery there had been absolutely no change in Nagito's tone of voice, like he was just commenting on the weather, the bastard. A sharp spot of anger briefly flared in Hajime's chest, then died. Once upon a time, he would have majorly rankled at the words, but these days he was a little more accustomed to Nagito, which included both his ever-fluctuating moods, and his pretence for sudden, sharp jibes. Now they'd been transformed into a minor annoyance, really, like an undone shoelace.

He aimed a shove at where Nagito's face was. "Oh, fuck off."

It had to be said that the shove was mainly for show, with only a half-hearted amount of power behind it that couldn't have even knocked Monomi over. But all of a sudden, the grip around Hajime's chest tightened, turning like iron, and the next second he was yanked backwards as Nagito deliberately toppled to the floor, pulling them both down.

They hit the ground with a substantial thump, Nagito letting out a strangled wheeze that tickled Hajime's cheek.

"Serves you right," mumbled Hajime, feeling half-stunned.

He considered staying on top of Nagito as a mild form of retribution - plus he'd know exactly where he was – but a little guilty-sounding voice in his mind vetoed that idea, its arguments being _He is sick_ and _You are heavier_. Which was unfortunately true; Nagito was unwell, and though the former was taller, Hajime was the stouter of the pair. Understandable really, since he hadn't spent his life tied to a metaphorical Catherine wheel labelled 'luck', that'd steadily been grinding his body into a fine paste with a constant stream of various illnesses and injuries. Sometimes, in the dim hours of the morning, Hajime wondered what it must be like to be shackled to such a capricious god, subject to its whims and fancies. But most times he found that he'd rather not know.

Reluctantly, Hajime rolled off, heaving himself upright.

"Shame," said Nagito, sounded winded. "I was enjoying that position."

Hajime felt his face heat up. Geez, that was Nagito all right, going seamlessly from pliable to prick to pervert, all in the space of a heartbeat.

"Not in public," he gruffly choked out.

The next second Nagito had sprung up, as if he hadn't almost been crushed just a moment before. He immediately latched onto Hajime again, clinging to him in a side-on hug that wasn't particularly comfortable for either of them.

"But we're not in public," he said, gesturing with an open palm to their surroundings, and drawing attention to them.

Idly following the direction of Nagito's hand, Hajime gazed out, and an unexpected jolt of unease lanced through him, sending a shiver up his spine. Something- something was off; an element that he hadn't noticed before, having merely glanced over it without properly taking it in. It was the distant horizon, Hajime realised. There was something decidedly weird about it. He peered at it, trying to make sense of what he was looking at. Then it hit him: _there was no clear distinction between field and sky_. The former simply faded into the latter like Hajime was sitting inside an infinity cove. Wait, that wasn't all; aside from the few trees dotted here and there, along with tangled gathering of foliage, there was nothing else present but _field_ or _sky_, no islands, no sea, no faraway buildings, nothing!

Now painfully alert, Hajime noticed something else, an aspect present in the breezeless wind. It was an unusually dry, rattling sound, a noise that could have been labelled as a wooden wind-chime, except it put Hajime in the mind of clattering bones. Even the air had gotten colder, the warmth fading from it. And hang on, why was the sky _white_, lacking all normal features, like _sun_ and _clouds_? Still staring at the non-horizon, Hajime bit his cheek. This had all felt so _normal_ and _familiar_, like something out of an old, well-loved memory, until those details had become apparent. Before he could continue contemplating the horizon, one of Nagito's hands gently came to rest on Hajime's cheek; he gently pulled it around so that they were looking at one another. A soft patch of foggy warmth bloomed under Hajime's skin at the point of contact.

"So, you've finally noticed, huh?" he said softly. Before Hajime could even being to respond, Nagito pulled him into a kiss. A second point of fuzzy, murky warmth bloomed where their lips touched, and Hajime felt a thick fog begin to seep into his mind.

"Don't waste time worrying about it," Nagito mumbled against his lips. "There's not long to go."

What? _What_?! What _the hell _did Nagito mean by that? Confused, Hajime tried to pull away but found that he couldn't, the strength to resist suddenly sapped from him. In lieu of full-body movement, his eyes slid back to the horizon, training them on it. But it was growing increasingly difficult to focus on the anomalies; the soporific heat in his face was spreading, and a warm sense of normalcy was bubbling up inside him, enveloping him. What was wrong about this scene, exactly? Oh, a whole bushel of things were wrong, little pieces of grit that grated against the mind. But Nagito's free hand was trailing up and down Hajime's back in a relaxing motion, shamelessly slipping under his shirt to run his fingers along the ridges of his spine, causing more pinprick points of warmth to bloom and making Hajime's thoughts scatter like startled birds. Shit, why couldn't he remember? For that matter, what was he trying to remember? Automatically his body shifted, turning to better face Nagito and leaning into him. There was something strange, but what? It was hard to think when Nagito was gently worrying his bottom lip with his teeth. At that point Hajime gave up agonising over it, and sank into the kiss.

"That's better," said Nagito, his voice low and husky.

Suffused with that curious, fuzzy heat, Hajime felt his body beginning to respond to the intimate action. He didn't try to fight it, instead opting to just let it happen; in the end it often boiled down to an outcome like this, when he grew too tired of trying to untangle the Gordian knot that made up the complex feelings he had towards Nagito. It was easier to just forget all about it for a while, and sink into him. It wasn't a particularly healthy or sensible option, but Hajime had long-ago acquiesced and made peace with it.

As Hajime moved, his mouth trailing an untidy path from Nagito's lips to jaw to neck to shoulder, gently biting there in an action that he knew was well-loved by the boy, his eye caught on something. He pulled away, brows creasing together. The small moan of pleasure that'd been trailing from Nagito's mouth transitioned into a whine of annoyance. Hajime ignored it, his eyes fixed on Nagito's cheek. A lurid spot of pink blood sat there, miraculously undisturbed. In that second the heat and fog immediately dispersed, strength returned, and the once-forgotten elements came back with astounding clarity:

_white sky breezeless wind cold air strange trees no horizon_

A further splash of colour caught Hajime's eye, and his gaze dropped down to Nagito's shirt. A pink starburst of blood was spreading outwards from his abdomen, staining the white and subsuming the abstract red pattern. A feeling of dread rose in Hajime's stomach, one that was strangely familiar, though he couldn't quite say why.

"Nagito? What's..." Hajime trailed off, his voice sounding strangled.

Nagito regarded his shirt with disinterest, winding a fistful of it in his hand. It stained his fingers pink, but as Hajime looked, he realised that that was wrong; there was a second wound, a great, piercing gash in Nagito's hand, puncturing straight through from one side to the other like a stigmata. Hajime clapped a hand to his mouth, horror and bile rising in equal amounts in the back of his throat. The air grew frigid, an empty industrial stench winding through it, the sort one would equate with a warehouse. The wind rattled, full of unseen bones. Or were they bones? For some reason, an image of bottles came to mind, knocking against one another. Horrified, Hajime watched as two more vivid pink patches started to seep through the material of the boy's trouser legs, slick and wet. In sharp contrast to Hajime, Nagito appeared almost bored. He regarded Hajime, his disinterest souring into outright displeasure.

"Really, Hajime," said Nagito, leaning forward, his tone placid. "Stop making such a fuss." With his bloodied hand, he peeled Hajime's hand away from his mouth, and Hajime shuddered at the slick, warm, wet sensation, the blood intermingling and staining both. "Just calm down, and..."

Nagito lunged forward, his mouth roughly meeting Hajime's in a forceful kiss. Warm blood gushed into Hajime's mouth in a thick torrent, and he wanted to scream, but between the rush of blood and forcible press of Nagito's mouth, couldn't. Furiously he struggled, desperate to break free, but Nagito held him in a vice-like grip, the blood from his hand running down Hajime's arm in pink little rivulets. And still the vomited blood came, pouring into him and filling his mouth with the metallic taste of salt. Panic surged within him, oh shit, it wasn't stopping, it wasn't stopping, he was going to drown he was going to drown he was going to drown he was going to drown he w-

"_...forget."_

A warm, pink sensation bloomed within Hajime, spreading outwards in a great, soft rush.

Everything stopped, the world briefly disappearing in a burst of white that faded as quickly as it'd appeared.

Hajime's brain felt like it was filled with cotton wool, soft, and stuffy, and smothering. Shaking his head, he pulled away from Nagito, staring confusedly around at his surroundings. It was peculiar; he had the strangest feeling that something had just happened, but when he tried to think of what, his brain shrugged and could find nothing. Hajime glanced at Nagito, who sat regarding him with a mildly quizzical expression, face flushed and eyes partially clouded with desire. His jacket was half-slipping off one shoulder, his shirt was creased, and his hair – as always – was half-heartedly sticking out in all directions, looking like a pile of freshly-shorn sheep wool.

"Did something just happen?" asked Hajime, feeling increasingly uncertain as he said it.

"Like what?" said Nagito. He sounded both genuinely confused and mildly irritated at the interruption, but you never could tell with him...

Again, Hajime glanced around at their surroundings, inspecting them and seeking some clue. However, he found that he couldn't really concentrate on them properly, his gaze slipping and sliding from one thing to another without properly taking them in. It wasn't helped by the fact that his mind was whispering a little mantra of _Nagito Nagito Nagito_, whilst his body made him painfully aware of the path they'd been heading down together; his pulse pounding, his skin aflame, liquid want coiling in his gut. Hajime looked at Nagito, and yes, there was a certain magnetism emanating from him, warm and soft, which Hajime felt unable to resist. Feeling light-headed, he had to conclude that nothing appeared amiss. Strange though, he could've sworn that _something_ just look place, something that was, shit, he didn't know what. Big, maybe? There'd been... There was... Who knew? As he stared at Nagito, his shabby old coat pooling around him, he got the undeniable impression that it'd involved _him_ somehow. But the boy looked no different than normal, which, admittedly, was often like a half-starved raccoon.

Defeated, Hajime shook his head. "Nevermind. Come here."

Hajime drew Nagito to him, and kissed him softly.

And when Nagito pulled them both to the ground once more, Hajime didn't roll off him.

Not for a while, at any rate.

oOoOo

Hajime woke from the dream with a surprising lack of fanfare. There was no sudden jolt, or jump, or start, like his body was an old car that had to be tricked into starting via a hand crank. No, one moment he was asleep, the next he was awake, the transition between the two being a seamless switch. Quietly, the dream settled inside him in all its horrendous, bloody glory, like ash covering a doomed town that'd sat too near a volcano. In its wake, Hajime felt a strange, empty void within him, born from the disappointment the intimacy in the dream had not actually been taking place right at that moment. A dull, post-sleep confusion swirled within his mind.

"What the fuck," he mumbled blearily.

Had his brain just tried to fucking _gaslight _him via an old memory? Oh, here in the clear light of day it was easy to see what'd been the original memory, because the bits that had been added in stuck out like parrots among pigeons; it was as if Monokuma had gotten hold of a children's picture book and doctored it by pasting horror paraphernalia into it, turning the story into a shoddily-edited nightmare. He'd had an encounter with- with-

Hajime curled in tight upon himself, misery sitting heavily in his chest, and skipped over their name.

He'd had an encounter with ******, and that'd been _real_, a solid event that had definitely happened, reality acting as a firm base. If the dream-turned-nightmare had just stayed like that, sticking to the script and staying unaltered, then it could have very easily been brushed off as a normal dream caused by too many racing hormones. But it wasn't. ******'s behaviour too, had been real at first, but then it'd warped, transformed into something as fictitious and false as both the spewing blood, and the wounds, and th-

Understanding hit Hajime like a lorry.

Memories seeping into memories, poisoning both…

A wave of exhaustion rolled over him. Feeling old and haggard, he tried to put the dream-turned-nightmare out of his mind.

He stared blankly out at his room, his eyes catching on things without really seeing them. The curtains of his bed. Rays of sunlight streaming into the stuffy room and creating angular blocks of light on the floor. The scattered and scant collection of Monokuma dolls, sitting in a stacked formation on their stand. The lone spider web in one corner, complete with spider. The camera, hanging from the ceiling and seeing all, like the eye of a deity. The en suite, its frosted glass blurring the facilities it held; through it, the bath looked like a solid block of white.

He'd lain in that bath once, Hajime remembered, though that wasn't to be confused with all the times he'd sat it in and actually used it as a bath. (Which was unsurprisingly often, given that they were on a tropical island, where sweat was king. That wasn't even beginning to factor in all the dust, blood, and general grime that accumulated whilst investigating, and the urgent mental _need_ to feel clean after a trial had concluded, even if you were already freshly-washed.)

Yes, he'd lain in it fully-clothed, sweaty and overheating, caught in the throes of heatstroke with his legs hooked over one side so that they were elevated, on a blisteringly hot day. Safe within the confines of memory where the sting of physical pain and sensation couldn't harm him, the memory had an almost pleasant aura. Of course, someone else had been there; they'd placed him that bathtub as an emergency measure; if not for Na-

Hajime rolled into his side in a burst of movement, shutting the memory out, shutting it _off._ No. No, he, he couldn't. He couldn't think about _him_ right now any more than he needed to. A headache coiled at the front of Hajime's head, and if he focused, he could almost trace the path the pain took, a little route that flowed and spiralled from the eye and up into the frontal lobe, branching out like the boughs of a tree. His mind felt foggy, his body weighty and slow. It was like the whole world was covered in a sea of invisible treacle that stymied and stifled everything, making even moving a slow, energy-sapping chore.

Feeling as heavy as lead, Hajime raised a hand and wiped away a substantial build-up of crusted sleep lodged in the corner of his eye. Or was it the residue of dried tears? He didn't know, and neither did he have the energy to care. Around him, he felt his body settle into stillness, and imagined himself as a statue, or a fossil found far in the future. Lying on his back as he was, Hajime reckoned that the hypothetical archaeologists and palaeontologists would probably assume that he'd peacefully died in his sleep, or had been purposefully laid to rest.

A wave of grief rose up within him once more, his face crumpling. How could he think of pithy, inadequate terms like '_laid to rest'_ right now? Nobody who had died here had been allowed that honour. Most of them had had their life snuffed out in some sly, sudden burst of calculated violence; they were subsequently either left where they fell, like a discarded toy, or propped up as part of some sick diorama to mask the truth. To add insult to injury, he and the rest of the class then picked over their lifeless corpses for clues, like vultures at a carcass, arguing with one another in a shameful display as they raked over the details, particulars, and personality traits of that particular extinguished life.

On the other hand, there was the worse alternative: some of the deceased had been dragged away to their 'punishment' - a word that Hajime had come to loathe - often times kicking, screaming, and crying. Some barbarous nightmare would then unfold, a tailor-made hell that'd been sewn specifically for them, with Monokuma performing the role of couturiere, his custom-made suits all lined with asbestos and fibreglass. Though he fought it, Hajime was never able to forget; the images of each execution burrowed their way into the cracks and crevices of his brain, and nested there.

Chiaki hadn't been 'laid to rest'. Her life had been a game, and so Monokuma had made sure that her death was a game, to; one where the complex mathematics which ran in the background were firmly stacked against her for maximum cruelty. A fresh wave of anguish rolled through Hajime at the thought, his heart aching with a terrible, physical pain that once again had him curling up into a ball under the covers. Still, his thoughts continued down that same path, unbidden.

Nagito hadn't been 'laid to rest' either. Shit, if anything, his death had been the farthest possible thing from such a concept as one could possibly get.

A half-choked sob bubbled out of Hajime. Shit. Shit! He'd said he wasn't going to think about _him_, but his grief-addled brain had offered up the name, irregardless. Dormant emotions that'd been furiously whirling around inside him before he'd dropped off to sleep began to churn anew once more. But they were muted, faint shadows of their former selves, with all of the gravity but none of the bite. Greif was the main one, the sea in which all the others sat like icebergs. Oh, but the salt of the sea was _hatred._

In that moment, Hajime really, truly, hated Nagito. But at the same time he could not deny that he _still cared for the bastard_, and he hated himself for it. It was like a damn habit that he couldn't break, his mind automatically taking Nagito into consideration and allotting him a portion of affection. Shit! It would be so much easier if he could just hate Nagito, plain and simple, instead of having this intricate thicket of emotions relating to him. Hatred and affection burned brightly within Hajime's chest, but in the next second both those emotions were consumed by a flood of worry; that in turn was then subsumed by grief, eager to be the main spotlight once more, which in turn was hastily tailed by a great mass of confusion, followed by hate, followed by grief, followed by love, followed by loss, and on and on and on and on-

Shit, he was a mess. Hajime uncurled, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes, desperately trying to get some sort of a grip on his turbulent emotions. It did nothing to help. Gripped by a sudden loss of energy, he let them slide down the sides of his face to flop onto the bed below, sloppily framing his head. Dimly, he realised that something about this position felt vaguely familiar, and-

A memory sprang, unbidden into Hajime's mind:

_Nagito, laying beneath him, his hair looking almost champagne pink against the crisp, white sheets, his shirt looking grey. On either side of his head, his open hands curled in on themselves. He had that damn self-satisfied smirk that Hajime wanted to knock off his face, either by kissing him, or clouting him. Nagito opened his mouth to speak, and-_

Disgusted, Hajime dismissed the memory. Anger burst within him, hot and formless, energising him. How the hell could he still feel like this? How could he have joyful, pleasant memories of Nagito, after what he'd done? For fuck's sake, he'd tried to kill everyone by killing himself, utilising the Class Trial like it was his own fucking _prop_ in a scheme that was so convoluted it made Hajime's head spin. Fuck, how could one person be capable of such a sickening act of spite? And in the end, it'd only failed because Chiaki had somehow seen through it all and had taken the bullet for them like a fucking _martyr_,leaving those of them lucky enough to be the _triumphant_ survivors sitting stunned in a shattered aftermath. Hajime had thought it impossible for his heart to break any further, but here it was, breaking again, the cuts and lacerations bleeding anew, dousing his anger. He was- _he'd been_ fond of Chiaki. They all were- all _had been_. She was like everyone's kindly sister, soft and cheery, ready to do her best, endearing to a fault. Sure, she'd been a bit scatty, but it'd been part of her charm, and when you got down to it, all the Ultimates tended towards eccentricity. Hell, Hajime felt that it was almost impossible _not_ to like her; even the rougher members of the class had warmed up to her in their own, unique ways. If there had been anyone on this tropical hell that Hajime had considered to be a truly good person, it'd been her.

He remembered the way she'd stared at a cow, after he'd managed to convince her to visit the ranch with him during a period of free time; genuine curiosity had been painted on her face, with just a hint of wariness within her eyes. Tentatively, she'd approached it, wearing a determined expression.

"Wow!" she'd exclaimed, as she'd gently petted the animal. "It's really warm!"

Hajime had wanted to laugh at that, not out of any unkindness, but more out of second-hand joy seeing someone have a new experience. The Friesian cow, for her part, had merely flicked an ear at Chiaki, and continued vacantly munching the grass.

From the way she'd cautiously stroked the cow, it was painfully clear to Hajime that Chiaki had had a city upbringing. There was something cosmopolitan about her manner, suggesting concrete streets and narrow skies, starless nights and convenience stores, second-hand light spilling out of open doors to illuminate alleyways, and the steady streak of car light trails. Yes, the picture had bones, and it was an easy jump task for Hajime to flesh it out further; he could almost see her in an arcade hunched over a machine, her face screwed up in a picture of utmost concentration, the intermittent light from the game machines illuminating and playing across her as the clamour and clatter of games filled the air with uneven noise. Or in her bedroom late at night, hunched up in a cocoon of sheets and alone in the house, a handheld clutched close to her face whilst a chink in the curtains let in light from a nearby streetlight, cutting a yellow beam across the floor. Chiaki and the countryside seemed like an ill-matched pair, akin to putting a freshwater fish in a seawater tank. He'd even ended up having to explain to here where milk came from, which had somehow ended up transitioning into an impromptu lesson about the dairy industry.

Hajime wished he could smile at the memory, but it only served to emphasise the gap that Chiaki had left, highlighting the empty space that she'd once filled. It felt like a knife was sawing away inside his chest, cutting through his ribs, descending through from fixed to false to floating. Chiaki and Nagito. Nagito and Chiaki. Locked together in death, like a pair of oxen yoked together and subsequently caught in a landslide.

"Was it worth it, you bastard?" Hajime mumbled, his voice thick. "Was any of it worth it?"

Bah, as if Nagito could hear him now, existing as some spectre hanging over Hajime's bed. Though Hajime honestly wouldn't put it past him to do that, just out of spite.

'_Was it my fault?_' he tiredly wondered. It was a question that kept haunting him, again and again, refusing to be exorcised from his mind.

He'd _known_ what Nagito was like. He'd seen the sort of schemes he'd tried to get up to - granted, they all had, brought into the light in horrifying detail during that first Class Trial. But out of everyone, he was the only one who'd gotten close enough to Nagito to understand him. No, that wasn't right. Hajime stared up at the still, translucent canopy of his bed as he considered it. He hadn't understood Nagito, not on a truly deep level, but he'd understood the _outline_ of him, the shape of him. That was the only way he could put it. And Nagito had made it perfectly clear that he was going to Die For The Sake Of Hope; it'd lain on the horizon, some distant point that'd he continually been running towards. Perhaps that was where the trouble lay; it'd been confined to that murky period of limbo known as _the future_, where all plans live, sleeping until their appointed time, and even more plans die before they're ever realised. _Dying for the sake of hope_ sat in the same category as _What are you going to do after finishing school_, or _I'd like to go travelling one day_. They were indistinct, hazy outlines of plans, not ones properly formed, filled out with the minutiae that act as the bones: _I need to pack this, this and this, and I need to be here by XX:XX, to catch the XYZ train, I mustn't forget to take my charger, and I'm changing at Z station..._

Due to that, and with the Killing Game going on, it'd been easy for Hajime to get distracted from that fact. Impossible to forget altogether however, because Nagito was, well, _Nagito_, but maybe not given the care it was due.

Perhaps that was something that Hajime had forgotten, too. Nagito was _Nagito_, and his mind was a perpetual motion engine that whirred away, planning and planning and planning...

And those plethora of hidden plans, ones with endless branching outcomes for each eventuality, ones that'd seemed so hollow and insubstantial, had turned out to have bones all along.

Was there something that he could have done better, some perfect, golden set of actions that would have miraculously prevented all this? Hah, as if life was some fucking VN to be cheated at and gamed for a golden ending. Nagito was,_ had been_, - and here a fresh burst of hate-tinged grief lit in Hajime's chest at the correction – his... what?

He'd never called Nagito his 'boyfriend' or 'partner', and neither had the reverse been true; Nagito had never referred to him with those terms, either. They'd had a relationship, but it hadn't been a _relationship_. They'd spent time together, shared a certain amount of physical intimacy, had shared opinions, argued, and made up. Those final three had often happened in tandem with alarming regularity. They'd also known exactly how to set one another off, their natural friction easily and unfortunately escalating situations into heated arguments. On occasion Nagito would witter away about Hajime's 'impressive physique', making Hajime flustered and confused in a flattered, irritated, go-away-hard-on sort of way. And in return, Hajime had known that he was fucked the moment he'd looked at Nagito and found him beautiful. It was not, he'd quickly clarified, that Nagito had been naturally beautiful; between luck treating his body like a punching bag, and his unhealthy living habits born of that same capricious luck, he'd been a sickly, scruffy, ragged thing. No, it'd been a much more familiar, intimate thing, where you do not love someone because they are beautiful, no, they are beautiful _because_ you love them. It was like the filter for a photograph: Hajime had looked at Nagito, with his papery-white hair bleached by illness, his bony frame that made him look, quite frankly, like he was dying – which was probably the truth - and his eyes deeply lined with bags born of exhaustion, and had felt an entirely fucked-up warm flush of fondness for him.

When look at it like that and taking all of those points into account, the thing between them had all the hallmarks and activities of a relationship. But Hajime knew that that was wrong, in the same way that covering a motorcycle with a tarp and then calling it a cheetah would be wrong.

Nagito had been _his_. That was whatHajime eventually settled on, too tired to think of anything else.

'_I can hardly be held accountable for his actions_,' he thought. An old, tired defence, to be sure, but one that rose to counter the question.

After all, Nagito had also made it clear, time and time again, that he was his own person, with all that that entailed, opinions included. He'd been fucking insufferable after finding that damned file.

'_And yet it didn't stop him from coming back to see me_,' Hajime noted. There had been a certain level of mild vitriol between them – one that'd always been there - but after _the file_ it'd been aggravated into outright aggression and exposed for the world to see, like a vein in the wrist.

Holy shit, he needed to stop thinking about Nagito.

Hajime sighed, a weighty sound that held all the world's sorrows within it, and stared off at one corner of the ceiling.

He was a suspicious, cynical bugger, one who was more inclined to expect the worst that blithely, _blindly_ hope for the best. He'd been wary from the start about this whole school trip, and now, here he was. Correct that it'd turned out to be a shitshow.

He hated being right.

How many more times could his heart break? How long would the cycle continue, wearing away at all of them until there was nothing but a collection of empty husks left? A sick, burning guilt spread throughout Hajime, self-hatred dragged along its wake. Chiaki and Nagito (_sorry,_ said his brain) were dead, and oh, how it hurt, but there was something else, lurking beneath.

_What, it isn't enough that they're both dead?_ hissed a thin, hateful voice in Hajime's mind, almost gleeful in its delivery. _Isn't it enough that you sent Chiaki to her death, only to save your own hide? Oh, you cruel, heartless bastard._

Hajime rolled over again, so that he was staring into his room once more. It was stifling in his room, but opening a window would've meant acknowledging that there was a world outside, and Hajime couldn't handle anything beyond the confines of those four walls at that moment. Yes, he bitterly agreed, it wasn't enough that Chiaki and Nagito were both dead. Oh, sure, it hurt - it hurt like hell – but the real sting in the tail, administering the poison, was _betrayal_.

He would never get used to the Killing Game and the Class Trial, never, ever, and each time it'd broken his heart a little more, the same way an earthquake and its aftershocks would damage a mountain, undermining it until crumbled in on itself. But he was human, and humans try to find patterns and normalcy even in the most trying of times. There had been a certain rhythm to whole process – _investigate – assemble – argue argue argue – punishment_ – and subconsciously he had taken solace where he could in that. It'd been a structure. A horrible, horrible structure born straight from hell, but to a human it was a blessing from above.

Except this time there had been an extra factor present, and it was one of entirely his own making. Loathe as he was to admit it, somewhere along the way, the threads of Hajime's emotions had become tangled with the cat's cradle that made up Nagito's. Monokuma forbid, he'd had a certain amount of emotion dependency on Nagito. Which, Hajime reckoned, must have made him the biggest fucking idiot in the entire archipelago - the heart was stupid and soft at the best of time, without factoring in the class psychopath.

'_What was that saying? The heart wants what it wants?_' thought Hajime.

It was something like that, though he could've sworn that that saying was connected to some sort of nasty bastard. A dry, humourless laugh escaped from him, bitter as a mouthful of mugwort. In that case, it was perfect match for a nasty bastard like himself. He watched the spider pick its way across its web. Amidst all the confusion and killing, his heart had apparently decided that it wanted Nagito, and there was fuck-all that Hajime could do about it.

Fuck it, Hajime had _cared _for Nagito, even if was an insufferable bastard at times. And then Nagito had promptly betrayed him.

'_Except you knew this was coming from the start,_' thought Hajime, '_so you betrayed yourself._'

Hell, forget the past tense, despite his present hatred, even now he still _cared_.

_He killed Chiaki, you fuck!_ screamed the hateful little voice in his brain, and Hajime could only agree wearily.

So perhaps it'd been understandable, natural, even, that Hajime's feelings had been such a confused mess when it came to Nagito; half the time he'd wanted to kiss him, and the other half he'd wanted to whack him. And when factored into and combined with the context of a Class Trial – an already volatile environment – well. No wonder it'd been hell.

Fuck, he was so damned tired of going in circles like this.

Exhausted, and filled with an apathy that left him unable to resist, Hajime sank once more into sleep.

oOoOo

He was in the library, its vast ceiling towering above him and appearing as distant and unreachable as the top of the sky. Snatching a glance, he noticed that it was twisting and warping slightly, as if unstable. Under normal circumstances that would have been a cause for concern, but Hajime ignored it. Instead he began moving, his pace an unsteady, anxious trot. An agitated energy filled his veins, crackling up and down his spine. Books lay scattered everywhere, evidence of someone sloppily searching through the shelves in a hurry. Hajime skirted them with uneven steps, as if performing some strange dance. He crossed the open court, and ducked between a pair of shelves, scuttling between them. There was something in here, something so desperately important-! With each passing second, Hajime felt his anxious agitation increase. He needed- he needed to _hurry_! Emerging from the shelves he executed a sharp turn, immediately heading for another set of shelving, his pace quickening. Perhaps, perhaps it was there? Oh, Hajime didn't know what it was that had him fretting so, he only possessed a certainty that he would know it when he found it. And he must find it _fast._

He rapidly jogged his way across the library, passing by shelves and piles of discarded books alike, the smell constantly changing from place to place but always remaining slightly old and slightly musty. Nothing, nothing, nothing! Hajime felt almost frantic; he _knew _it was here, it _had _to be here! It'd been here all this time, and now it sang to him with a siren song that he could not ignore!

"It?" said Nagito, a neutral expression on his face, but a sneer hidden within his words.

He appeared behind without warning, and for a moment Hajime was viewing the both of them, as if from the perspective of a third person. Nagito was floating in the air, and Hajime knew with an unshakable certainty that it was because his legs were broken. Indeed, they were bent at the knees, sticking out at unnatural angles, the trouser legs rumpled and spotted with blood. They were dripping, leaving a breadcrumb trail across the floor of the odd pink splatter here and there. That wasn't all; the edges of his coat were caked with dried blood that was a dull rosewood pink. A hole had been punched in his cheek, exposing the teeth and gums behind it in a bloodied skeletal smile.

Nagito continued. "How typical of a Reserve Course student, searching for something without even knowing what it is."

Despite Nagito's ghoulish appearance, Hajime felt no fear or unease stir in his chest. There was simply no _time_ for that, not when he still hadn't found- hadn't found- what? What was it that he was looking for? Hajime hurried on, and Nagito automatically followed at a fixed distance, like he was a tethered balloon.

'_Stairs!'_ he suddenly thought, the word bursting in his mind like a firework. He had to get to stairs! Because of course, it- it wasn't here on this level, it was beneath! He could almost feel a faint pulsing underneath his feet, a warm glow indicating that something was there. The important thing, that he couldn't for the life of him remember, it, it was below!

Now there was a real frenzy to Hajime's movements, agitation spiking through him in a sharp burst; he scrambled forwards, breaking into a run and half-tripping over his own feet, sending piles of books scattering as he barrelled through them. He smacked into the wall, knocking the air from in lungs in a single gust as his palms pressed flatly against the surface. Under his hands, the wall briefly bulged and rippled.

"Clumsy, clumsy," sang Nagito in a singsong voice. "You're making enough noise to wake the dead - _not_ that you would remember them."

Hajime pointedly ignored him, and began to run alongside the wall, eyes peeled for any sort of entrance, or opening, or inlet. He ran, and ran, and ran, feet pounding against the hard floor, one hand practically glued to the wall, Nagito still trailing behind him-

And toppled sideways into darkness. It was deep, descending, and absolute, a textured thing akin to velvet with the opacity turned down. Once more, Hajime found himself viewing his own body - somehow with perfectly clarity despite the darkness - this time as it tumbled, arms and limbs akimbo, head painfully smacking against the steps, in an unending flail. Over and over he went, deeper and deeper into the stairwell. Nagito floated by Hajime's consciousness, idly eyeing the falling body and occasionally watching the disembodied Hajime from the corner of his eye. Gore dripped away into the darkness, vivid pink falling into unending black.

Hajime for his part, stayed very still, and very quiet. Something was happening in his brain; now that he'd stopped racing about, his mind was taking the chance to quietly inch towards something, some epiphany, thought by thought by thought. It built its own little path, each thought like a brick placed above a void, forming a bridge. Like the ripples fading from a pool of water, a picture was taking shape in his mind's eye, the outline growing clearer with each passing moment. The thing he wanted so desperately to find, it was, it was-

Hajime slammed into the floor, his shoulders painfully smacking concrete as bright light burst around him.

"-A person!" he cried, scrambling to his feet, despite the pain lancing through his back muscles. "It's a person!"

"Hm, so you finally got it. Bra-vo," said Nagito, sarcasm dripping from every syllable.

"Shut up!"

With a burst of speed, he took off down the corridor. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the light, he could see that it was a dim, fluorescent sort, not very bright at all. But when contrasted immediately with the darkness of the stairwell, it might as well have been the sun. He was getting closer, he just knew it, the fact singing within Hajime's chest and spurring him on. Head down, he put on an extra burst of speed, the action making his neck muscles twinge. He skidded around a corner, his trainers scuffing against the floor; a room opened up before him and Hajime screeched to a halt, almost tripping over himself as momentum tried to keep carrying him forwards. Before him stood a veritable wall of compactors, all a grubby white, leaving very little floorspace between Hajime and the door; above, the ceiling towered off into the distance, so impossibly high that it faded into a musty darkness.

Without a doubt, Hajime knew that _this_ was where the mystery person was, the one he'd been so desperately trying to find; every part of his body felt drawn here, like a fish on a hook, and he could no more resist the pull than a landed carp could. He still didn't understand why this was happening or what the reason was behind all the urgency, but now that he was so close that didn't matter. He just had to find them! Quickly!

"Inside," he muttered frantically to himself, running a hand through his hair. "They're inside."

He desperately tugged on the wheel of the nearest compactor, trying to get it to spin and create an opening between the shelves. It refused to budge. Again, he tugged, eyes quickly scanning to see if the lock was engaged, but no, the compactor had no locking mechanism on it. He moved to the next one, tried it, failed. Again, there was no lock. He moved on, from wheel to wheel, a fearful desperation building in his bones. One of them would open, it- it had to! It must! With a great, heaving rumble a corridor would open, and inside he would find-

He would find-

With a final nudge from his brain, the answer clicked into place.

"Chiaki!" shouted Hajime. "Chiaki, can you hear me? Where are you?"

"Finally," hissed Nagito, though his voice was little more than the soughing of wind. Little fleck of pink drifted away from him, his fragile form slowly beginning to disintegrate.

From compactor to compactor Hajime rushed, his heart feeling like it was about to burst, panic making his fingers clumsy. If he just kept trying, eventually either one of them would open, or he'd run out of compactors. And there was no way that the latter would happen, because what would be the point of storage that couldn't be accessed? It was a maniacal, panic-stricken hope that lodged within Hajime, almost on the verge of tears. But the wall of compactors stretched on and on, fading into the distance...

"I'll find you, Chiaki!" cried Hajime, "I'll find you!"

Wheel after wheel, compactor after compactor, none of them moving...

"Chiaki!"

oOoOo

Hajime awoke to sunshine streaming on his face, and his stomach snarling at him like it was a rabid wolf. Misplaced panic briefly crackled through his veins, then slowly calmed and faded. Like a bath that'd had the plug pulled, the dream drained away, flowing along the threaded fibres of his muscles in little rivulets, draining between joints, and carrying the dream – a dense, silt-like substance – with it.

"Whu-" murmured Hajime, this voice thick. His mind felt tired, and slow. Had there been another dream? Yeah, yeah, there'd been one but... about what? Dim shapes flickered through his mind, fading like the morning mist; Chiaki, Nagito, the library...

Scrunching his brow, Hajime tried to remember, tried to dredge up the dream as it sank. But the more he tried to force himself to remember, the faster it slipped through his fingers. Soon there was nothing but a few faint sandy traces that hadn't been carried away; crusted residue that clung to his bones:

Chiaki. Nagito. The library.

His heart gave a dull ache at the thought of their names, but it was a deadened sensation. The sadness that'd pervaded his form the day before, ruling him and weighing him down, was still present, but it'd metamorphosed, changing from a thick slurry, solidifying and compressing into a hard little ball within Hajime's chest. It sat there, dark and dull, like a far-off moon, radiating sorrow.

'_Should I stay in bed again?_' wondered Hajime; it was a slow scrape of a thought. As if in response, his stomach gurgled and growled once more, a sharp pang of hunger shooting through him.

Hajime sighed. Guess that answered that.

Running on an autopilot that was born from years of routine, he pushed himself upright, haphazardly propping himself up on uneven arms, and winced. Oh. Oh, holy shit, did he feel like hell. Tentatively, he brought a hand to his forehead. Nausea thickly coated the back of his throat, a secondary symptom of the hunger twisting his stomach and snarling at him for sustenance. His mouth felt like he'd done nothing but drag his tongue along a road, leaving a sick, sour taste as an aftermath. What felt like an eon's worth of gunk with several layers of strata was crusted in the corners of his eyes - which also felt raw; it was the perfect accompaniment for yesterday's headache, which had since upped roots and was now quietly skulking around in the back of Hajime's skull.

With a chorus of protests from seemingly every muscle group in his body, Hajime swung his legs over the side of the bed, and rose. In an action that was supposed to be walking, but ended up being more like a very graceful series of stumbles, he crossed the room, heading for the bathroom, and more importantly, the mirror. Upon reaching it, for a second Hajime could only peer blearily at his reflection, his mind not properly taking in just what it was he was looking at. Finally, his eyes and brain coordinated themselves enough and holy shit, he was a mess. It was like he'd aged fifty years, or Monokuma had run him over with a dustbin lorry; a mop of greasy bedhead stuck out in all directions; his bloodshot eyes had so many bags underneath – accentuated with a dark, curving streak of grey – that he could've opened a baggage claim area; blotchy areas of red covered his face, and what skin that wasn't red was deathly pale instead, and on top of all of that, his clothes were grubby and crumpled. Not to mention the general _smell_…

Yikes.

Hajime ran a hand down his face, hooking yet more crusted sleep from the corners of his eye. Okay. Okay. Food would have to wait. (_Bitch_, growled his stomach.) First, he would have to sort out all this; he gestured vaguely to himself in an up-and-down motion, despite the lack of an immediate audience. Trapped within the confines of some shoddy plywood and glass, his reflection mirrored the motion.

oOoOo

Fifteen minutes later, Hajime stood in front of his cottage door, feeling about 45% fresher than when he woke up. The sadness was still nestled within his chest, and he still looked a bit haggard, but it was a start. Time to face the world once more, along with all the shit that Monokuma would throw undoubtedly send his way. The thought was like a weight in his mind; for just a second, he hesitated, hand pausing halfway to the door. After all, going outside would mean resuming everything, as if the Killing Game had merely been placed on pause whilst he was inside. But staying in the cottage would mean stagnating, with only poisonous looping thoughts and ghosts of the dead for company. What good would that do? Surviving so far just to lock himself away and succumb to despair? No. Chiaki would not want him to shut himself away. For that matter, _Hajime_ didn't want to shut himself away either.

Hajime exhaled a long breath out through his nose, grabbed the handle, gave it a twist, and stepped out into the sunlight.

No matter the sadness, we must always continue to live.

oOoOoOoOoOo

_AN: This fic has been sitting in my folder for, I dunno, ten months? Anyway, I was very unwell the other day and needed a distraction/coping mechanism, and so here we are._

_The title is taken from 'Death With Dignity' by Sufjan Stevens._


End file.
